Evergreen

I forgot about this one - took the snapshot but just tonight downloaded from the camera. In the judges raffle at the end of Game Storm last month, my name was called fairly early and I snatched Evergreen from the prize table. This is a light game by Kramer and Kiesling where players work to manipulate musical artist popularity then hold concerts to maximize revenue for their signed artists.

KC, Rita, and Matthew enjoy a game of Evergreen.

I hadn't heard of this game before and took a chance pulling it off the prize table (well, not much of a chance, but I could have taken something else). Gameplay is very straightforward - each artist is represented by a 45 single with a rotating inner disc that represents a popularity value from 5 to 12 (5, 6, 7, 8, 10). There are also cards numbered from 1 to 13 for each artist (think of each artist as a different suit). These cards are shuffled and dealt out to the players. A big part of the game is hand management - this is all you get to play for the game.

At any one time you can have three cards in front of you. This represents your influence on one or more of the artists. If you have the highest influence, you get the record disc placed in front of you. Whenever a disc changes hands, its value (popularity) gets rotated one tick clockwise. So an artist worth 5 then becomes worth 6. On your turn you get to play 1 to 3 cards anywhere on the board - this means you can play cards on other players (always covering up an existing card). At the end of your turn (the duration is controlled by a sand timer), you can choose to hold on of your three concerts (a personal scoring round) where you get points equivalent to the popularity of each of the artists you control. One time only you can hold a special gala concert where you score double.

The game is simple, a bit chaotic, but reasonably fun for the duration it lasted (about 40 minutes). There are similarities to Schrille Stille here, but it is a little less random but not quite as enjoyable. Jacob really enjoyed it.